Hypos are great

As we all know, one of the major features of type one diabetes is the occasional (or, indeed, frequent) hypo. No matter how well controlled your diabetes we all get the usual sweaty symptoms of joyful hypoglycaemia.

Fortunately, unless you’ve really screwed up, hypos aren’t really all that bad. With a hypo it’s pretty unlikely you will end up frothing at the mouth, fitting wildly or waking up in an unknown, anonymous motel room clutching an axe covered in your victims’ blood.

I’m not defending hypos, mind. They’re certainly not very nice, when I meet up with other diabetics we don’t all enthuse about the radical or gnarly hypos we’ve recently experienced. I’m just saying that things could be worse. After all, the simple cure for your basic hypo is to shove a load of sweeties down your gapping maw, after which you’ll feel fine again after ten or so minutes. Hellish nightmare come true, it ain’t.

Perhaps because of this someone commented on another diabetes web resource (I know, they do exist – crazy, eh?) that they actually quite liked hypos as it gave them the opportunity to feast on the sweeties so usually denied to them.

I thought this was a bit mad. I don’t know about you, but I tend to have a favourite hypo cure and stick to it – in my case it’s fruit pastilles at the minute. However, as a result of sticking an average of three tonnes of fruit pastilles down my neck each year (I wish I had bought Nestle shares) I now have an almost pathological hatred of the damned things. It’s the same with all favourite hypo cures – I used to drink Lucozade but now can’t stand the stuff. I used to guzzle Hypostops but now can’t even bear to look at even the packaging (not that they were really nice in the first place). Now all these are denied to me.

So, in my view, hypos don’t give you a green card to gluttony, they only ruin your appetite for your favourite sweeties. Another in the long list of tragic diabetes casualties.

11 thoughts on “Hypos are great”

About 10 years ago in a rather spectacular early morning one, I came around to discover in my bedroom were two paramedics and a police officer. (My GF at the time hadn’t really got a grip of it and decided rather than feed me to call the ambulance.)

Turns out in my madness I had attempted to give the female paramedic a cuddle for giving my lucozade.

Problem was my choice of nightwear, with it being the middle of summer and all ……… you can fill in the blank 🙁

Re: Hypo cures, I’ve never really settled on “one” cure – I tend to obliterate the kitchen and end up hugely injecting later to compensate. Brain just goes into eat, EAT, EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT mode!

The only problem i have with hypos is occasionally they make me vomit. One of the funniest hypos i had was whilst shopping in asda. I started to almost be like i was on supermarket sweep. I literally cleared the sweets aisle into my trolley. I ate some on the way round then was rather embaressed when i got to the till with a trolley full of sweets and empty wrappers covered in sweat. I never did get was on my list and i started blabbering about being diabetic to the till women who must have thought i was the worst diabetic in the world for getting a trolley full of sweets.

Seedy is indeed good… 😛 Also the most annoying – mid sex hypos are SO damn annoying it’s not funny. Nothing kills the mood quite like a hypo. Also can be tricky to spot, many symptoms being present, I get a bit paranoid about it now D:

Hypos are usually ok for me, a bit wearing at the moment as they are daily pretty much, but I haven’t got to hating the cures just yet… I change flavour of dextrose tablets every time I buy a new box!

NOT eating everything in the supermarket/kitchen is the hardest part for me. I need to buy less easy to eat food I think – I haven’t yet thought ‘I’ll cook myself a roast dinner’ whilst hypo…

My mum used to force feed me honey when I went hypo overnight and was too far gone to actually ‘eat’. Even the smell of honey now makes me retch…
I havent yet gone off any sweets – but I tend to just eat glucotabs when hypo, and only when hypo, so I guess I never had an appetite for them in the first place (they come under ‘medication’ in my brain’s sorting office, so like/dislike doesnt seem to come into it).
When _going_ hypo, now that’s a different story. Wispas all the way…

I’ve never committed motel murders, but I’ve frothed at mouth – due to a very touchy vomiting centre (place in brain where you’ll get great deals on barf towels), and I’ve fitted wildly – usually keeling over and ending up with bumpy hills on head(many x),pants ruined at the knees(few x) or overstretched lower limb ligaments that required use of crutches (one x). Oh, and once I was bitten on my arm by my chauffeur when I became uncooperative about swallowing antidote*: I had lovely blue tooth marks to show for it.

*usually dissolved glucose powder, which is blandly neutral, and doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of any sweetmeats.